24. Abbot #3
Abbot draws back, but his shoulder bumps the wall and there’s nowhere to go. Of course he can’t say anything. Ned would be more frustrated with him than he already is. Those years Ned is so curious about? Those were the worst version of Abbot, and not one Ned needs to know.
“Go ahead.” Ned waves his hand and the watch sits in it, the band swinging delicately through the air.
Abbot has a sudden urge to put a hand up, like he can stop it from striking him.
But Ned just waits in the beat of silence. Then he stands, setting the watches in the drawer his ring was in, replacing that too. He shuts it gently and then leans against his desk.
“Okay,” he says. He sounds defeated.
“Ned…”
“No. Okay. That’s—that’s fine. You can’t. Or won’t. Whichever. I’ll just—I’ll live with that, I guess.”
“Ned…” Abbot hears his voice crack. “Please don’t be upset.”
“What do you want me to be?” Ned asks. “Happy?”
“I want—yes. I want you to be happy. Us to be happy, together.”
“I want that too, but you won’t even begin to talk to me. That’s not an engagement right there, Abbot. It’s barely a relationship.”
“But I love you.”
“Yeah, and I love you too, but what the hell are we doing?” Ned asks, his voice rising. “Is this what you want from us? Because it’s not what I want.”
“Ned—” Abbot’s chest is cold. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I want you to tell me about yourself. About anything. Your life, your exes, your family. Beverly, who’s going to be my new damn boss. Do you want a list?”
“I—” It would help, Abbot thinks in a far-off, shrill sort of way. But that’s just it: each of those topics blend into one another, those people and places and years he’s tried so hard to leave behind him.
Can’t Ned understand that?
“Please,” he manages.
“What, did you kill someone?” Ned lets out a humorless laugh. “Are you a murderer? Is that what’s going on?”
“No, of course not, I—Ned, I can’t.”
“Then you want me to just go on wondering about you? You’re ready to move in together, and I know basically nothing about you?”
“You do. You know me.”
“I guess I just don’t know where I see this going,” Ned says softly, his voice so very terribly quiet. “We’ve had an amazing time together. We love each other. But then there’s all this stuff we just can’t talk about, so where do we go from here?”
Why is he talking in the past tense? Ned knows he said that, doesn’t he? He has to. It’s his words.
Panic flies high and blind before Abbot’s eyes.
“What do you want to do?” he whispers.
“I don’t know. I have no fucking idea. We just told everyone we know that we’re getting married. My daughter, Abbot. I can’t go back on that with Peggy, but this kind of stuff makes me wonder what our relationship really looks like, you know?”
“We’re okay,” Abbot gets out. They are, aren’t they? They have to be.
“At some point, maybe not today or tomorrow, or this year or the next, but eventually, this is going to really bother me. More than it does now, even. So what is it about me that you won’t talk to me?”
“It’s not you. I just don’t want to discuss that part of my life.”
“But what are we doing that we can’t talk? What am I doing wrong?”
“Nothing, Ned. I—I didn’t particularly like myself back then. I’d rather not revisit it.”
“It’s more than that,” Ned says. “So will you just tell me what’s so wrong with me that you absolutely refuse to share anything about yourself?”
The words circle like shattered glass, each one of them piercing. Ned thinks it’s something awry with him? For how long? How has Abbot missed it so terribly thoroughly?
“Wrong with you?” Abbot feels the cold press of the wall behind him, the weight of this conversation, and through it, a piece that doesn’t fit.
“Jen couldn’t talk to me, and now it’s the same thing all over again, so what the fucking fuck is wrong with me?”
“Ned—”
“Is this just how my life is? Everyone I care about takes a look at me and—”
“No, Ned,” Abbot says, louder. “That’s not—I—don’t want you to know.”
“Exactly!”
“No, about me, that I—I didn’t visit my mother.”
“You—what?”
“In the hospital,” Abbot whispers. He suddenly feels very, very far away from himself. “When she was sick, I wouldn’t go see her.”
Ned stares at him.
Abbot can barely stand to see it. “It’s an awful thing. She’d ask me to come, and I wouldn’t answer the phone, or I’d leave it at Reto’s—”
“Wait, wait, who’s Reto?”
“Or I used to, when I was younger, I’d tell my father I was with her, and I’d tell her I was still at school and was busy, and I’d go anywhere else than to the hospital.
But then when Beverly would come, she’d take me, she’d make me go, she’d walk with me and I’d—” He sucks in a breath. Dimly, he feels Baxter nudge his leg.
“Sweetheart,” Ned says.
“That is what’s wrong,” Abbot says, his voice stronger now. “It’s not you. Not at all, Ned. But you don’t want to know that about me.”
“Abbot—”
“And I was terrible to Beverly, who was nothing but kind to me. The men I was seeing—Ned, I can’t. But it’s not you. I should go. I’m going.”
“No, no, no,” Ned says.
“Please.”
“You were a kid.”
“I wasn’t.” Abbot can hear how sharp his tone is, and waits for it to cut through the softness on Ned’s face. “I was an adult when I was at university, and I was no better.”
“Of course you didn’t want to see your mom sick. And Beverly was there for all of this? Where was your dad?”
Abbot shrugs, one of Ned’s gestures. “Working.”
“Oh,” Ned whispers. “The two of you.”
“What about us?” Abbot asks but no, that’s beside the point entirely.
The important thing is that he get up, gather his things, and go get his car.
Where he’ll go, he can sort out once he’s on the road and moving.
Just not here, with Ned watching him, Abbot’s words still ringing through the small room.
Why did he have to tell all that to Ned?
Because he’s different, Abbot thinks and he would suddenly very much like to throw up.
“Abbot, I love you,” Ned says.
“Don’t.”
“I absolutely won’t stop. Not about this, and not about anything.”
“You ought to.”
“Tough shit,” Ned says. “You were young and scared and hurting.”
“I didn’t go see her, and I should have.”
“Not ever?”
“Not enough.”
“So you did go.”
Abbot sets his jaw. “It wasn’t nearly sufficient.”
“Were you there when she died?”
Liesl so very pale. His father completely, terribly still.
He nods once and tips his head up to stare at the ceiling, fighting the burn in his eyes until it recedes.
“That’s good,” Ned says softly.
“She likely wasn’t even aware.”
“She was.”
“You can’t know that.”
Ned offers a small smile. “You can’t either, then. Hey. Come here.”
“No.”
“Then I’m going to come over to you, okay?” And he does, leaning closer, shifting his weight in the small space between them.
Abbot watches him, wary.
“I’m going to kiss you,” Ned says, and then he does, cupping Abbot’s cheek in one warm hand, tipping his face and kissing him once, gently.
He pulls back. Abbot finds himself watched, Ned’s eyes moving as he takes him in.
“You are the most precious, precious man,” Ned whispers.
“I’m not.”
“I love you. And I want everything about you.”
“You don’t.” Ned doesn’t even want to live with him.
Before Abbot can say that, Ned is kissing him again. Small, quick kisses, one after the next. Every time, Abbot braces for him to pull back, and every time, Ned doesn’t. He just presses closer, coming to kneel beside Abbot, crowding close.
His kisses gain momentum, and Abbot lets them, allowing Ned to tip his chin. Abbot meets the nip of Ned’s mouth, the tease of his tongue.
When Ned pulls back for a breath, Abbot finds his fingers knotted in Ned’s shirt. He’s pulling the fabric too hard, but he can’t quite loosen his grip.
“It’s not you I don’t want to talk to,” Abbot says. That’s important to get out. He knows that through the numbness that’s taken hold of him.
“I can understand that,” Ned says.
Yes, because what Abbot did was awful.
But Ned stays kneeling over him, close enough that Abbot can feel him breathe. He’s not prying Abbot’s grip loose. Not twisting away.
“Abbot, I’ve got you,” Ned says, tipping their foreheads together. “And I’m not going anywhere.”